-
Asked by wych10dug to Sarah on 17 Mar 2022.
Question: Do you use alot of the things you learnt at university in tour day to day life?
- Keywords:
-
Sarah Partridge answered on 17 Mar 2022:
Yes. My university degree gave me a lot of background information that I then apply in practice. Although I have learnt a lot since too.
For example when looking at whether medication patches can be halved, I need to look at what they are made from and how the medicine is being released! This technical knowledge was definitely from my university training.
Comments
Ruby commented on :
I think as a GP it is one of those specialities that you will use all that you have learned at Medical School
Laurence commented on :
I studied leadership and management so yes I do use tools to help me think and organise my work.
Aaliya commented on :
Yes! A lot of my learning at University was practical hands on information, not just theory. Some of the lectures help me with the “building blocks” and foundation of understanding which I can use even now to work things out when I am not sure of an immediate answer. In my degree we learned a lot about diseases and how to communicate with patients. A medical degree also involves hospital and GP placements so you learn about different ways of working as well.
Danielle commented on :
Definately, in nursing you have theory and clinical placements in hospitals, with district nurses in the community, mental health wards so you get a bit of everything. I went to uni at 18 and had never done any personal care for anyone else so learning how to wash someone and brush their teeth etc was so important before I done it on a real patient. When your out on the wards all the theory you learn at uni makes much more sense and enables you to make the right decisions on their care needs.
Anna commented on :
Yes, the biggest thing is the journey patient might take. You might only see them in a small part of that journey but really good to get an overall understanding. Also there were placement I hated, so it helped me at least what I didn’t want to do.
Sarah commented on :
Yes. I use the statistical skills I used to make sense of data and to suggest evaluation design. I use the knowledge of health psychology and sociology to understand some of the non-medical factors that impact people’s lives and health, and to help me understand why some people benefit more than others from training. I use the module I did on survey design constantly.
But I also think it’s important to think about the “soft skills” too. I learned things like time management because i was balancing my course (and in Scotland you do three courses for your first two years), working and socialising. And I had to learn self discipline because no one is hovering over you making you do things so it would have been easy to have too much fun and not study, adn really regret that later.
I learned how to manage group projects and how to pull it together if someone let me down – that’s been an INCREDIBLY useful skill since then!
University was a time when I met people who were from different backgrounds to me, from different cultures or places. I sat up late talking with people I would not have met in my home town, and listening. I learned about what it was like to grow up in a warzone, for example. I had to get part time jobs, and again, my colleagues were from very different lives from me and I listened to them too – I know that’s not university but I would not have been doing those jobs if I had gone straight out to work so it’s part of my university experience. I read a lot around my courses and reading teaches you not just knowledge but empathy and critical thinking. So actually for my job it isn’t just the subject matter in a specific degree – you can catch a lot of that up later, in management roles – it’s about the experiences around my degree and the time to learn how to learn at a higher level, the people and the skills.